Political Wisdom: In Torture Memos, Context Matters

The topic of the day is torture and first up, conservative National Review Online editor Rich Lowrygives his take on the torture memos, saying “there is a line somewhere between the highly restricted methods approved in the Army Field Manual for interrogation of enemy soldiers and illegal torture. The only way to find and honor that line is by lots of lawyerly analysis of practices that — in the words of Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair — ‘read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing.’ Blair’s point is an important one — context matters. If any of these methods was used against domestic criminal suspects, it would shock the conscience. They were instead deployed against terrorists with information about their network and perhaps ongoing plots. U.S. officials have dueling obligations in such circumstances, both to abide by our laws and to protect the public. Balancing these obligations is necessarily a fraught, complicated task; it can only seem simple in retrospect, when the threat appears to have receded.

“Reasonable people can disagree about whether the Bush administration succeeded in its balancing act,” Lowry concludes. But without a “more mature political culture,” analyzing such issues “would inevitably descend into a hyperpoliticized takedown of the CIA and the Bush Justice Department for ‘war crimes.’ The frenzied reception of the ‘torture memos’ is just a preview.”